Political Islam came to power in Sudan in 1989 during the only successful experience of a movement of these characteristics in the Arab world up to now. However, nobody had analysed the changes experienced by the Sudanese Islamist movement since its creation in the forties until the last transformations at the beginning of the 21st century.
The researcher Rafael Ortega Rodrigo, through his doctoral thesis ‘Evolution of political Islamism in Sudan: From the Muslim Brothers to the National Congress’ has analysed the successes and failures of this movement when it moved from theory to practice. This work intends to be a framework to reflect on future Islamist experiences and understand the role of political Islam (one of the main political actors nowadays) in the configuration of Arab and Islamic societies.
The thesis analyses the contributions of Sudanese Islamism both to the political, social, intellectual and economic life of the country and to Islamism beyond the borders of Sudan. Rafael Ortega’s study examines the figure of the maximum representative of Sudanese Islamism: doctor Hasan al-Turabi, a thinker, activist and statesman, who has presented very original proposals, such as the defence of an Islamist feminism or the creation of an Islamist international (the Popular Arab and Islamic Conference).
His research work reflects on the failures of the Sudanese Islamist movement when they intended to put into practice, since 1989, their theoretical model of State and society. The reasons for these failures are in the own movement (as it became in the first years an exclusive and repressive regime), and in their international pressures against them. However, the research work concludes that the Islamist regime and movement are in a process of re-adaptation to a new Sudan, integrationist, plural and democratic, a result of the peace agreement signed with the guerrillas of the south of the country in January of 2005.
Reference: Rafael Ortega Rodrigo. Department of Semitic Studies of the Universidad de Granada
Phone number: 958 303 863. E-mail: rafael.ortega@mailcity.com